The present invention relates to recording and more particularly, but not exclusively, to a method and apparatus for branch IP recording.
Capturing and recording media data is a frequent and well known practice within commercial environments, as well as among private individuals.
For instance, many industries rely on call centers for the collection and dissemination of critical customer information. As call volumes grow, and customer data collection and customer inquiries become more complex, businesses increasingly look for additional functionality, efficiency and flexibility in their communication systems.
There are many systems developed for recording and archiving telecommunication transactions in commercial environments, where the recording is carried out centrally.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,923,744, to Cheng, entitled “Intercepting call communications within an intelligent network”, filed on Apr. 24, 1997, the inventor describes a method of intercepting call communications within an intelligent network (IN) for law enforcement purposes under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) at a dedicated service control point (SCP) and routing calls and calling information from a public telephone network to selected subscribers for special centralized services.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,751,297, to Nelkenbaum, entitled “Method and system for multimedia network based data acquisition, recording and distribution”, filed on Dec. 11, 2000, introduces an intelligent digital recording system, in conjunction with public centralized network resources.
Nelkenbaum provides wide area multimedia (Fax, Internet, Screens, Video, Voice, etc.) recording services.
The architecture taught by Nelkenbaum allows parallel recording from a variety of communication sources, i.e., wired and wireless networks etc. The stored data can be accessed by the end users via a variety of multimedia formats, or can be distributed to the users on a predetermined schedule using several different storage and/or transmission mediums.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/005,816, to Anders, entitled “Centralized voice over IP recording and retrieval method and apparatus”, field on Dec. 7, 2004, teaches an apparatus and methodology for recording, at a central data center, telephone conversations originating from remote locations.
Anders discloses a methodology for recording and storing voice and related data at a central data center remote from either the origin or destination locations of a telephone call placed by an inmate in a prison or other facility.
The technology disclosed by Anders permits storage of both voice and call related data at a remote facility in such a manner that the data is searchably accessible by authorized personnel at other remote locations by way of network or Internet connection to the central data center.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/442,876, to Barker, entitled “Voice over IP telephone recording architecture”, filed on May 30, 2006, describes a method and system for on-demand recording of a voice session by a telephone recording device in a telecommunication network.
With Barker, after establishing a voice session between the telephone recording device and a communication device, a user of the telephone recording device may instruct the recording device to store voice data during the voice session so long as the voice session has not been terminated.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/452,917 entitled “Voice over IP Capturing” assigned to Nice Systems Ltd. discloses a network device which is configured to capture communication (voice, video, text, etc) carried over voice over internet protocol (VoIP) data traffic in an internet protocol (IP) network. The captured data may then be forwarded to a remote server.
The systems described hereinabove are dependent on the smooth and continuous operation of the network connecting a remote branch and a center where the actual recording of calls (or other media) captured at the branch is carried out.
Though there are current solutions to branch recording that are independent of the central server. The current solutions have the disadvantages of needing dedicated equipment in the branch, expensive, a maintenance burden and cost, a large footprint, and lack support for new multimedia types.
Simple recording solutions such as tapes, several known propriety solutions, and the like are also unsatisfactory, because it is not feasible to retrieve relevant information or interaction as rapidly and completely as is usually required.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a system devoid of the above limitations.